Having been a passionate exercise hater, I know exactly how it feels not to like exercise and how difficult and uncomfortable just the thought of it can be!
In my last article I talked about the obstacles of exercise motivation and how it seems impossible to master them. The fact is that everybody can learn to enjoy exercise and to see it for what it is.
It is a tool to maintain or improve the quality of your health and well being, and so it is ultimately a tool for survival.
I turned from an exercise hater to an exercise lover and even took it a step further to a profession. Exercise is one of the most important parts of my life and I now "really" like it. I know many others that have the same experience even though we all got there in different ways. So, how can we go from hating exercise to loving it or at least not minding it?
Again, different circumstances can get us to see the light and to change our state of mind. Sometimes destiny forces us to change our attitude, like in my grandmother's case . . When she was 67 years old she was diagnosed with stomach cancer. Having never exercised in her life before, she was weak and in bad shape. She went through severe surgery and was left with the reality that now she really has to take care of herself. Her choices were slim and severe. Take care of yourself and master your disease or give up and die. She started exercising and hated it. The positive reinforcement of her doctor and her family and her fear of losing the battle kept her going. Instantly she felt the benefits. She started feeling stronger and found herself in a better sate of mind, ready to turn around her destiny. Realizing that exercise helped her fight the battle took away her feeling of helplessness and her discomfort with exercising and turned it into passion. She lived a long life into her mid nineties; she looked and felt great. She was very active, travelled the world - and all that without a stomach. I am not saying that her exercise program made all this happen, but she would assure you that it played an important part in her recovery.
Thankfully, most of us don't have to go through something so severe to change our mind about exercise. In my case, I was just really lazy and annoyed with the whole idea of exercise. I was skinny, so why bother. Because of that I was really weak, always tired and I developed cellulite on my legs.
Being rather vane, I could take the weakness but I could not take the cellulite! I started exercising and successfully changed the shape of my body, still hating the whole thing. What kept me going was the fear of the cellulite coming back and my feeling about it didn't change for months.
One day I came down with the flu and couldn't exercise for almost two weeks. I was surprised to realize that I actually missed exercising and couldn't wait to go back to the gym to feel good. It had become a habit, a part of my life that made me feel good and up to this day I could never imagine a life without exercise ever again. This is the secret. If you go through discomfort for a positive goal, the discomfort will pass, guaranteed. But how can we make ourselves go through it until we are hooked, especially if it could take a long time?
First of all you need to change your attitude.
There are many things you do in your daily routine that you don't even think about. They are part of your day. No thoughts are wasted on the possibility of doing them or not. You just do them. For example, you shower every day and every day you brush your teeth. You don't think about those things. You don't sit there and question your desire for taking a shower and brushing your teeth, you just do it. You can approach exercise in the same way. It is not about wanting or not, it is a necessity. After your body is used to exercise you are able to enjoy it the same way as taking a nice shower or bath and feeling good about being clean.
You need to find a way to integrate exercise into your existing lifestyle - if it is too inconvenient you will stop doing it. It’s a bit like dieting. If you try to lose weight by going on a fad diet or using diet pills you will fail. It may give you temporary results but you will not be able to maintain them. If you stay on the diet you will get sick in one way or the other and if you stop dieting you will gain your weight back.
So, what you need to do is to sensibly change your way of eating for the rest of your life so you can stick with it for the rest of your life. Exercise works the same way, only good sensible exercise habits can make it possible to stick with it for the rest of your life. If you jump into it with the attitude of “I want it all and I want it now" you set yourself up for failure. Which brings us to the next step. Setting realistic goals.
If you decide to start exercising because you want to lose 200 lb in one month, you will fail. Your goal needs to be achieved in little steps. This is the only way it can be a success. Trying to take ten steps at once will guarantee a nasty fall and that is true for all areas of life not only exercise. There is nothing wrong with wanting to lose 200 lb but it is a big mistake to put an ultimatum on achieving this goal. So, tell yourself you are going to lose 200 lb, no matter how long it may take. Set a first step goal, like losing 10 lb. in the next 4-8 weeks and go to achieve that first before going the next step.
Also important is to keep it simple. Don't let yourself get pulled into the “Fitness Industry” and its marketing strategies of making exercise a complicated thing. It is not!
For example, many fitness professionals say it is important to calculate your "target heart rate" and to check your pulse frequently while exercising in order to get benefits from aerobic exercise. I disagree, and believe it can take the fun out of it and make it feel like going to a doctor visit. The fact is that if you are engaging in any form of aerobic exercise like walking, running, swimming or classes, and you don't feel your heart beating faster, you have not done enough, and if you collapse on the ground gasping for breath you have done to much! Pretty simple, isn't it? . At least make a commitment that you can keep. Start slowly, make a small commitment like engaging in some form of exercise twice a week for 20 minutes. Stick with it no matter what. If you don't like the form of exercise you are using try something else until you find something that is doable for you. Be open to the positive effects; feel them before going the next step. If this doesn't work ask for support from somebody you know that is active or join a group or hire a trainer.
Whatever you do don't give up and remember the guidelines above. Eventually your mind and body will stop fighting it - guaranteed!
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